children of war
by guiltylights
Summary: The war isn't over, at least, not for us. - Gaang-centric; after-canon. Two: Katara.
1. set half the world on fire

_**[Time started: Feb 4 2015, 11.43pm; -]**_

_**/slinks away quietly in shame/ **_**Don't look at me I had to. **

**Disclaimer: None of the characters from "Avatar: The Last Airbender" belongs to me. All rights reserved to their respective owners. **

**Please rate and review!**

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**Title: **set half the world on fire

**Summary: **We've all got our own battle-scars. - Zuko.

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That was the strange thing, about war.

It never really left you completely. Even after Ozai had been defeated and Azula locked away for good and the entire world entering into a state of attempted post-war peacetime, the hollow-empty tragedies of war still sang haunting-sweet and deep along Zuko's bones, shivering down his spine like a sheet of water, and sometimes Zuko finds it hard to sleep, in the middle of the night.

Because when he closes his eyes all he sees is Azula spit-howling blue flames and Ozai defeated in dark prisons and the sight of half the palace on fire and the lives of so many people known or unknown lost to the war. Zuko sees a cumulation of his mistakes in his life unfolding itself in front of him and watches how things might've gone if he hadn't realised the error of his mistakes and continued chasing after the Avatar-

Zuko watches himself kill the Avatar, over and over again, leaving Ozai free to rule the world with his corrupted hand, with vicious fire raining down on the world like the end of life as he knew it.

Whenever Zuko closes his eyes the images sear into his mind like white-hot lightning and wouldn't go away so, yeah, he doesn't really sleep much, nowadays.

But this was not the time to worry about that, right now.

Right now Zuko was currently stuck in a peace council meeting with ambassadors from all four corners of the world with the Avatar and the rest of the gang seated next to him, and Zuko had to fight hard not to pinch the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. Agni, these people were going to be the _death _of him.

On the sides of the room, lit fire-torches crackled merrily and splashed light against the ornate gold-gilt edges of the heavy red room, the thick tapestries hanging from the ceiling somber in their detail. Zuko sits cross-legged at the head of the table, because this was the Fire Nation and this was his palace and he was the Firelord, and it would only make sense for him to sit right at the front, in the middle.

Aang is serene and quiet all the way to the side, his sleet-grey eyes kind and calm; but his orange-yellow Air Nomad clothes are an unspoken reminder of the consequences of war, and the other ambassadors avoid meeting his eyes, despite him being the Avatar who saved the world.

Katara is next to him, all folded hands and swept up hair and gentle gaze, a picture of perfect finesse and sensitivity - but a Master Waterbender capable of crushing a man's heart in five seconds.

Sokka sits to the left of Zuko, eyes focused and analytical and severe, his hand never leaving the sword laid down carefully next to him, and next to Sokka sits Toph, all twelve-going-on-thirteen rebellion with a cocky smirk and vindictive eyes.

Zuko's allies and comrades from the war - his _friends _\- sit next to him with almost the same power, almost the same dominance as him, four Masterbenders and a skilled warrior, and together they are invincible in their authority.

"So what you're saying," Zuko repeats, slow and calm, face a perfect mask of serenity and diplomacy despite the frustration and anger he feels bubbling inside, "is that you wish to be subsidised for your city's damage from the war."

"Correct." From across the thick, shiny square table a man with mean eyes and thick lips set into a sneer sat complacently, blunt-knuckled hands clasped on top of the light mahogany wood, and Zuko restrains himself from twisting the flames from the torch nearest to him from the wall and burning this man alive.

One of his fingers twitch; the torches around Zuko flare ever so slightly for a moment before receding and continuing to flicker merrily. Zuko watches as the man's eyes dart to it for a second, before sliding back and focusing on them. He was a small emperor of a small city somewhere in the north-south provinces of the Earth Kingdom, with all the ambition and all the greed and none of the power, and yet here he was, demanding reparations worth more than ten times his entire gods-be-damned town and still having the guts to act like they owned him it. Like it was their fault that the war started in the first place.

Two years after the war, and they were still cleaning up Ozai's mess.

Zuko fights to stay calm. "Neither the Fire Nation nor the Earth Kingdom will be able to afford that. What you're asking for is an impossible sum of money."

And it was; the Fire Nation would be crippled if they were to pay for such a ridiculous figure, what with their already struggling economy and half-collapsing trade market whilst they were still trying to build themselves back from the ground up.

War chews everything up; it breaks and mangles and spits out everybody involved, even the perpetrators, and as Firelord Zuko could not, _would not, _pay for his own country's suicide.

Especially not when it was for as unjustified and selfish and foolish and stupidly _greedy _a reason as this.

The man sitting across of him sniffs; he stretches back, places two hands over the paunch of his belly. "But as the leader of the nation who very clearly started this war in the first place," he drawls, "should you not find it your responsibility to pay for the damage that _your _country and its people have inflicted upon the other states and their innocent citizens?" He grins yellow-crooked teeth, all crooked and mean and blunt-sharp edges.

Zuko's fists clenched around his heavy dark Fire robes; his eyes burn vicious and golden and angry.

"But of course," the man smiles, and his eyes shine oily and slick with dirt-greedy glee, "my city is also under the Earth Kingdom's name, and so they must surely want to aid their own people in the repairment of city damages. Perhaps Lord Zuko could discuss with the young earthbender here on how you two may want to split the cost?"

It took all of Zuko's willpower to not set the man across from him's green-and-gold robes on fire; out of the corner of his eye he sees Toph, two people down from his left, scrunching her face up in obvious disdain and displeasure. The torches around them flared erratically; the earth down beneath them shifted.

The man's smirk remains unchanged.

_Viperleech._ How dare he suggest that Zuko _owed _his pathetic little self any semblance of an apology. What had happened during the Hundred Year War, it had been Ozai's doing, not his.

And whilst Zuko had been left to deal with the repercussions; the accomplices, the betrayers, the loyalists, the country staggering under the weight of their own crimes, _Zuko _owed the bastard sitting across from him absolutely _nothing, _and neither did Toph. Agni, she was just a representative, she wasn't even part of Earth Kingdom royalty!

He and his friends had ended this entire god-forsaken war. If anything, _they _should have been the one getting owed, instead of them owing people. Together, they each probably had more experience being on the front-lines of bloodshed more than anybody else at the table _combined. _They had sacrificed so much, to end this war for the world.

Zuko thinks back to his nightmares and to his own little sister locked up in chains and his entire family in ruined shambles and all the nights spent panicking alone in his room and the taste of blood and fire and death still lingering acrid in his mouth, and Zuko wonders bitterly if things were ever going to change for the better.

(Zuko doesn't think so. But he prays.

He prays so hard, for all of them.)

"I hope that you can understand," Zuko starts out slowly, carefully, "Lord -"

"Lord Tengi," the man supplied.

"Lord Tengi," Zuko continues, "that such a request could not possibly be accepted by either Fire Nation nor Earth Kingdom. Not only is the figure you have asked for ridiculously large-"

And here Zuko stares straight into Lord Tengi's eyes, gaze steady and burning like a fire, and Lord Tengi's smile falters; time to show him just what he and his friends were capable of. "It is also thoroughly, and completely unjustified."

Zuko smooths back the silk along the arms of his robes like they were battle armour; they were slippery under his palms, slithering out from his grasp like water, and Zuko flexes his fingers.

The torches burn orange-hot under his control.

The rest of the ambassadors sitting around the table are silent; they watch the exchange between Lord Tengi and Firelord Zuko with his allies with cautious eyes, and the air hangs thick and tense in the spaces of the seconds that follow.

"Unjustified?" And Lord Tengi tilts his head, motion slimy like fish entrails crushed in a person's palm on a hot summer day, "How so?"

And it is here that Toph finally speaks up.

"Unjustified in the sense that at least half the money you are demanding to receive will probably go into your own gods-damned pocket instead of to your city, and the other half into wine and women and gambling, as well, you greedy old geezer." Toph snarls, and leans forward with all the solid weight of a rock, milk-green eyes not focusing on anything in particular but still managing to pin Lord Tengi down with its gaze.

Zuko can feel the rumble of the earth beneath them vibrating through his feet.

He sighs a little to himself, before his spine hardens to steel and he straightens out and prepares for a fight.

The bloodshed of the war was over.

But the battle hasn't been won yet.

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**This is so not what I'm supposed to be working on right now. Damn me and my terrible life habits. **

** I had been intending on this fic to be a stand-alone at first, but now I think it would be cool if it was a series, with one chapter for every one in the Gaang. Though I'd probably get lazy after this. Eh. **

**Please rate and review! I love reviews; they make me smile :)**

_**[Time ended: Feb 6 2015, 12.52am; -] **_

**EDIT: Edited on 8th Feb**


	2. skeleton smile

_**[Time started: March 5, 2015, 1.01pm; –] **_

** My exams for this term are over; so basically I can afford this before I have to start studying for the exams coming up at the start of the NEXT term ;-; Meanwhile, have this. **

** Disclaimer: I do not own "Avatar: The Last Airbender". All rights reserved to their respective owners. **

** Please rate and review!**

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**Title: **skeleton smile

**Summary:** She was vicious in her kindness. –– Katara; peripheral Katara/Aang.

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The water in the air trembles around her, and Katara fights to stay calm.

Brown curls flying wildly around her face, she reaches up and absentmindedly tucks a few strands back behind the smooth shell of her ear. Katara determinedly ignores the whispers floating behind her, ignores the sideways glances thrown her way by the palace servants as she walks by. They watch her with distrustful eyes. She snorts.

_It's almost as if they've never seen the colour blue before. _

Bone beads clacking in her hair and skeletons hidden in the closets of her smile, Katara wears the regal ocean blue of her water tribe with a fierce pride, a fierce smile. She is a smudge of dis-colouration against the deep dark red silks of the Fire Nation, a shout of rebellion, a hit of vicious arctic wind. She was everything the Fire Nation disliked, everything the Fire Nation wanted to hide. _How infuriating it must be, _Katara thought, with satisfaction curling in her gut, _for the Fire Nation nobles to have to tolerate me amongst their presence. _

Stuffy racist pigs, the lot of them. The Fire Nation nobles were still uptight, still stuck-up, despite years of history and bloodshed to warn them otherwise. Still holding onto the idea that the Fire Nation was superior, that they were entitled to things that did not belong to them, that the other elements were inferior and _weak, _even though Katara and the others had saved the entire world from crippling at the hands of a century-long war. Katara of the Southern Water Tribe did not hate often, but if she had to pick someone to hate, it would be the Fire Nation nobles.

Subconsciously, Katara reaches out with her bending to feel for signs of water around her. There were pipe systems flowing throughout the palace, and a pond nearby. That was more than enough. Katara smiles.

Even if the palace was bone-dry without a single drop of water Katara still needn't have worried. There was water everywhere, hanging thick and heavy in the air, in the plants, from the sky. Katara was in her element, any time, every time.

"Ahem, Lady Katara?"

The voice slides down her back like iced sand, smooth but gritty and grainy and unpleasant, and Katara inwardly shudders. Katara settles her face into something smooth and placid and calm, before turning around.

Katara turns around slow and graceful like a line of music, and comes face to face with Fire Nation noble Araha.

Katara can feel her disgust coming back two-fold, and fights to keep the emotion off her face. Araha was the worst of all the nobles, the slimiest of the slime; heartless and mean, he was a bully within his own noble house and unashamed about using money to fulfill his own personal needs, even at the expense of other people's lives. Katara suspects that he has bribed and bartered and blackmailed his way to power, and bullied everybody around him into submission. His authority and his money are stained with the blood of the innocent. It was disgusting.

"Hello, Araha. How are you?" Katara smiles, pleasant, calm, always the perfect picture of a motherly figure, even in the face of someone she'd rather drown in a river. As much as she dislikes Araha he has not yet given her a reason to lash out at him, though Katara suspects it was only a matter of time.

But for now, she will be polite.

"I'm fine, Lady… Katara. And you?" Araha's smile was stiff in the return; he forced out the word _lady _like it physically hurt for him to do so. The word slipped out into the air like a snake, coiled, venomous, heavy.

Katara's smile remained unperturbed. _So he thinks an honorific for a Waterbender like me is beneath him, huh? _She thought, viciously. Her hands came up to fold within the long sleeves of her blue robe, the light cotton going _whisper-swish _as she moved. The Southern Water Tribe didn't make clothes like these, being situated in the freezing arctic of the South Pole; cotton would've been impractical. But Katara's brought over the unique blue dye exclusive only to the Water Tribes at the poles and sewn herself a blue robe from scratch, in the style of Water Tribe garb. After months of wearing the heavy red of the Fire Nation, the blue was a relief.

Katara was fiercely unapologetic of who she really was, and this was just one of her ways to show it.

"I'm fine, Araha, thank you for asking. Are you looking for me for anything?" Katara asked.

And Katara watches, as Araha seems to sag into himself, losing some of his usual demeanour of condescension and cockiness, and looks her straight in the eye for the first time throughout their entire conversation. Katara feels a distant sense of disbelief and fascination; like this, Araha was almost likable. Almost.

When Araha spoke, he sounded impossibly genuine. "I would just like to offer my apologies, on behalf of the Fire Nation nobles, for our misbehaviour towards you recently. It was most inappropriate. Our apologies extend towards the Southern Water Tribe as well. We hope you can accept it." And with this, Araha even bowed. He _bowed. _

Katara stood, too stunned at the turn of events to even respond.

As Araha straightened, Katara found her voice to speak. "Thank you for your apology, Araha. I will also pass the message along to my brothers and sisters in the South Pole."

Katara felt her heart softening, against her better judgment. _Perhaps I judged him too quick, _Katara thought, staring at Araha still standing in front of her. _After all, people are capable of change. He would be no different. He seems sincere enough. _

Too sincere. Katara caught the gleam of something in Araha's eye: it was short, nothing more than a flash, but Katara caught it, and it was enough.

Araha smiled delightedly. "That would be most excellent, Lady Katara. I hope that such… disagreements between us would not get in the way of our trade negotiations later in the afternoon." And here Araha's smile split wide open like a shark's; jagged and sharp and mean, he leered at Katara like she was nothing more than useless prey.

Katara felt hollow, like someone had scooped out her innards and left her empty; she should have known that it was too good to be true.

She gave an impossibly thin smile in return. "Of course not, Araha. My decisions as one of the Southern Water Tribe representatives will stay the same regardless of circumstances."

Araha's smile dropped at her statement. The implication behind her words was very clear. Just as well. Katara hadn't been planning on being subtle anyway, in the first place.

"Is that so?" Araha drawled, losing all pretenses, stepping forward to peer down his nose at Katara as he towered over her. Araha was a good head taller than Katara, and looked stronger to boot, too; despite grayness in his hair and beard he was built sturdy underneath his heavy Fire Nation silks, with strong arms and wiry muscle. But Katara wasn't afraid. She's fought men bigger and stronger than him, tougher and more powerful; she's fought a number of men like stronger than him, and _won. _So Katara, Katara wasn't afraid.

Sometimes Katara forgets that when people look at her all they see is a slip of a girl, at the age of fifteen-going-onto-sixteen, with long hair and blue eyes and thin snappable wrists. People look at her, and underestimate her, because they can't see what she is capable of, what she can _do. _She could churn the entire palace into ruins with a whirlpool of water; grind everything to dust, if she wanted it. She could drown men. She could even _freeze _their blood in their veins where they stood. She was a Master Waterbender who had defeated _Azula _and helped save the world. If it weren't for her naturally kind nature, Katara could've easily killed this man standing right in front of her. She'd done it before, in war. She could do it again.

_War has changed me, _thought Katara, distantly. She thinks to all her friends, all her comrades, of everything they've been through. _War has changed all of us. _

Katara looked at the man in front of her with wide blue eyes, and did not step away. "Yes, undoubtedly." She confirmed.

Araha narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, he grinned; an ugly vicious smile that split across his face like flesh tearing open.

He hummed. "I wonder what your Avatar would have to say against that."

Katara immediately felt hot, and then cold all over: ice-flashes of heat arced down her spine like white-hot lightning, and Katara unconsciously tensed. "And what do you mean by that?" Katara asked, impeccably calm, impeccably composed.

Araha, noticing Katara's sudden stiffness, grinned even wider. "Yes, the hero who saved the world. Aang, wasn't it? He's also your boyfriend, or so I've been told. Perhaps I might swing by his sleeping quarters later this evening, and say _hello_."

The implication of Araha's statement was clear.

Katara's eyes flashed wide and impossibly blue. Carefully, carefully, Katara folds her hands behind her back, and bends water out of the air to form a shining silver-white ice dagger. It gleams, dangerously, behind her, and Katara does not move.

"Are you threatening me?" Katara asks, bluntly, easily, staring straight up into the eyes of the sneaking, conniving, _bastardly low-life _man in front of her.

Katara thinks of Aang. Aang, with his goofy grins and carefree laughs and his almost impossible human kindness; Aang, with his bravery and his heroism to save the world even after running away from his destiny as the Avatar for a hundred years; Aang, who's had to shoulder the infinitely huge role of saviour of the world all alone at the tender age of twelve on his skinny shoulders, and Aang, whose gray eyes are more than a little haunted and scared, these days. Katara thinks of Aang, who needed her. Her friend. Her comrade. The boy she loved.

Araha's smile was a twisted ugly thing, reflecting the late morning sunlight like sharp jagged glass.

"Yes."

Before Araha could even blink, Katara brought the ice dagger up to his neck and pinned him against the wall; around them, more ice daggers hung suspended, mid-air, their sharp points glinting sharp and pointing silently in the direction of Araha's body.

Katara was close enough to see comprehension dawn in Araha's eyes; watch the fear finally set in like a conclusion made too late, and to see Araha look at her as if he finally saw the parts of her that gave her the power to save the world. Katara smiled, demurely. Surrounded by the weapons of her element with her brown curls wild around her face, the afternoon sun backlit to the impossible blue of her robe and of her eyes, Katara has never looked more terrifying.

Her smile bony-white like the beads in her hair, Katara leans in.

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**Lmao so basically I took like ten months to wrap this up – I know it's written up there I started this in March, but then I abandoned it for like nine months being busy with schoolwork and stuff, and it was only now that I finally found time to pick it up again. Not to mention I was having writer's block with this. **

** I feel like I kept constantly veering off-course to write Katara as vicious and psychotic in this fic – so I had to constantly check myself to make sure that I didn't do that. Also note that I'm not really a Katara/Aang shipper, so writing the last bit was interesting. **

** What do you guys think? Was this a decent portrayal of Katara? Did you like it? Hate it? Leave a review and tell me! I love reading reviews; they make my day. **

** Please rate and review! **

_**[Time ended: December 13, 2015, 11:28pm; –]**_


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